Northwest Florida State College’s Men’s Basketball Team will start the season with a target on their back as the preseason #1-ranked team in the country. 

The team welcomes back a new but familiar face as their head ball coach. Coach Steve DeMeo, the head coach of the Raiders’ 2015 National Championship team, returned from East Carolina University by way of St. John’s University to lead the team. During his previous stint at the NWFSC all 42 of his players graduated and earned division I scholarship offers after their time on the team. For his accomplishments, DeMeo was named the NJCAA head coach of the year. 

The team received 12 of 13 possible first-place votes from pollsters. The only other team to receive a first place vote was Florida Southwestern in Fort Myers. 

The team will face a tough regular season schedule before they earn another chance to compete against the nation’s best junior college teams. In November alone, the team will travel to Iowa November 16th to play #3 Indian Hills and visit #18 Southeastern the next day.

You can check out their full schedule here. The Raiders first game is Tuesday, November 1st against Southern Union State Community College.